Big Cartoon News

Illumination Entertainment’s The Secret Life of Pets jumped through movie theaters this weekend, topping the record for the biggest opening weekend ever for an original animated film. With a weekend take of $103.17 million for its first three days, Pets surpassed the $90.4 million record made by Pixar’s Inside Out last year. Pets also had the widest opening ever for an animated film, opening in 4,370 theaters this weekend.

Disney announced via Facebook Live that Oscar-winning animated film Wreck-It Ralph will be treated to a sequel in 2018. Though currently unofficially titled Wreck-It Ralph 2, the film will see the return of John C. Reilly as Ralph and the anticipated return of Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, and Jane Lynch as Vanellope von Schweetz, Fix-It Felix, Jr., and Sergeant Calhoun, respectively.

It was not until 1934 when the things actually started to be serious about the code. Scenes, scripts, shoots even whole films were banned. Nude, violence, racial points of view or religious critics were cut. And, of course, that was for animation as well. But, unlike films, animation fed on irony, social and political criticism,…

With the seeming unstoppable success of Disney’s live-action adaption The Jungle Book, and previous box-office toppers Maleficent and Cinderella– Disney is sifting through a lot of old animation classics with an eye to live-action remakes. With the box office success of each successive live-action adaption, it is no surprise at all that we see more adaptions on the horizon. Now Disney is saying they are already working on The Jungle Book 2, with both director Jon Favreau and writer Justin Marks returning to the film.

The video-game inspired animated film Ratchet & Clank opened this weekend, but could not overpower the 1-2 punch of Disney animation. Despite opening on nearly 2900 screens, the Rainmaker Entertainment and Blockade Entertainment production could not overcome the almost universal panning by critics, and the film only took in 4.8 million, and coming in at 7th in the box office.

In a stunning shake-up of animation studios, NBCUniversal has picked up DreamWorks Animation for 3.8 billion dollars, in a deal announced April 28th. Comcast- the parent company of NBCUniversal- says that Dreamworks “will become part of the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.

From the late 19th century everything had changed in the new world. The working class had been growing fed by thousands and thousands of new immigrants, who, unlike the first ones who came from Britain, Canada, Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia, these arrived from Hungary, Italy, Poland and Russian. The new immigrants were often Catholics and Jewish and, often as well, their cultural and religious heritage collided with the one of the first colonists.

ToonBox Entertainment’s The Nut Job 2– originally to be released January 15th- is now looking at a release next month on May 19. The sequel to 2014’s The Nut Job features the return of Will Arnett as Surly Squirrel.

The idea that cartoons are created only for children is a pretty common one. However you may find that this preconception is a lot farther away from reality than you would think. Disney became the king of cartoon- land, and in doing so turn animation into an integral part of the film industry, with his philosophy dominating the market until the end of the century. But animation- not even in Walt Disney original intentions- was never intended only for kids.

Zootopia is a classic lesson about cinema. Full of references to the history of Hollywood, its script is a good example model for teaching new writers. The story shows that the magic can only emerge when the whole set and the relationship between the parts are working in harmony.